4 THE PHYSICAL KINSHIP 



animal kingdom. But, like most men still, I 

 continued to think of him as being altogether 

 different from other animals. I thought of man 

 and the animals, not of man and the other animals. 

 Man was somehow sui generis. He had had, I 

 believed, a unique and miraculous origin ; for I 

 had not yet learned of organic evolution. The 

 pre-Darwinian belief that I had come down from 

 the skies, and that non-human creatures of all 

 kinds had been brought into existence as adjuncts 

 of the distinguished species to which I belonged, 

 occupied prominent place in my thinking. Non- 

 human races, so I had been taught, had in them- 

 selves no reason for existence. They were acces- 

 sories. A chasm, too wide for any bridge ever to 

 span, yawned between the human and all other 

 species. Man was celestial, a blue-blood barely 

 escaping divinity. All other beings were little 

 higher than clods. So faithfully and mechanically 

 did I reflect the bias in which I had grown up. 



But man is an animal. It was away out there 

 on the prairies, among the green corn rows, one 

 beautiful June morning a long time ago it seems 

 to me now that this revelation really came to 

 me. And I repeat it here, as it has grown to 

 seem to me, for the sake of a world which is so 

 wise in many things, but so darkened and way- 

 ward regarding this one thing. However averse 

 to accepting it we may be on account of favourite 

 traditions, man is an animal in the most literal 

 and materialistic meaning of the word. Man has 

 not a spark of so-called ' divinity ' about him. In 



